He Hid It Well
by birkinsmith-88
Summary: Otacon confronts Liquid.Liquid confronts Otacon.[LiquidXOtacon]


Notes: My first Slash fic! Be gentle!

I have SO wanted to write something between Liquid and Otacon FOR AGES but never worked up the courage.

There's a lot of het references in there, but it all leads to the not-so-het, so I guess that's ok.

If you see an # , go to the endnotes to know what it's about.

**EDIT: **I had it revised by a friend for typos and the like, so I hope it's okay now.

Anyway, here we go.

----------------------------

He hid it well. . . .

- The boy with the glasses, he meant –

- No, that wasn't true. He wasn't a boy, yet he certainly seemed like it. Liquid had read his profile, as he was never the one to be unprepared, no mater how . . . _insignificant_ the detail may be . . . and despite his great achievement, he _was_ merely a detail . . .

The boy was as old as him, give or take a few years either side . . . It wasn't possible to tell the exact year of his own birth, given _what he was._

And there it was again: _The anger_. Liquid chuckled bitterly to himself; he only had to acknowledge what he was briefly in passing to stir up the sickening feelings of self-loathing and pain he had so fiercely felt ever since he found out the truth about what he was.

Liquid put those feelings to one side, struggling somewhat to do so: save your precious rage for the _Snake_.

Liquid tried to remember what he was thinking of before the surge of rage swept away his rational thought.

Oh yes. That boy. –

- But he _wasn't_ a boy, was he?

But it was hard to tell without knowing his age - as Liquid did from his profiles. He liked cartoons. _Japanese_ cartoons, the boy often stressed to the others around him, but the nationality of them meant little to Liquid. But more so than the cartoons demonstrating his childlike innocence was the degree of belief in them. Liquid felt something wicked coil in his stomach at the thought that the tyrannical metal beast that towered before him was the product of innocent dreams, perverted by desires of military domination, but at the same time, something else in him bled from knowing this.

Liquid tried to fight it, that bleeding thing inside him that made him hurt, yet at the same time he felt an almost orgasmic pleasure at witnessing that great metal beast before him. It only made that thing inside him scream out more.

Emotional wounds were a lot like physical wounds: there was no cure, only treatment, and one did not treat a bleeding wound by stabbing at it, so Liquid ceased stabbing at the voice of what only could be guilt and turned away from the metal beast-

- Only to be peering into the eyes of the man who had created it.

"What are you doing here?!" Liquid barked, as it was expected to do when one was surprised by a non-combatant.

"Ah!" He yelped instead of an intelligible response. He threw his gaze to one side and fiddled with his circular glasses for a few moments, even though there was no clear fault with them that Liquid could see.

"I was. . . I was just checking up on Metal Gear, sir. . . ." He said with a strange, forced quality to his annoying voice, his nervous gaze occasionally grazing his.

Liquid couldn't help but spitefully smirk; despite all his suffering, Liquid had yet to learn empathy for his victims, and for that he was eternally grateful. Though he knew it was _deeply_ wrong that he took great pleasure in making this excuse for a man squirm deep in his very essence, but he had long since passed the point of caring.

. . Hadn't he?

. . . Whatever . . . .

After a long and awkward pause, Liquid replied:

"Why? The machine hasn't been activated yet. It hasn't even taken its first steps. It was like this yesterday, and the day before that, and then the day before that, too. We didn't send for you, so there must not be a problem."

"Uh, yeah . . ." Said the boy, as people who had difficulty starting convocations often did. "Y'see, I always check up on REX at about this time, come rain or shine . . ."

Liquid shook his head jovially to himself. Had that answer come from anyone else but him, he would have not believed it for a moment.

"How did you get in here anyway?" Asked Liquid. The control room for Metal Gear REX was locked to all but few with maximum security clearance and was airtight thanks to the bullet proof glass. The only way any outsider (and the boy had been relieved of his higher access codes earlier) could get in was if he allowed it, which he eventually would; he needed to trick _Snake_ into activating the nuke . . .

"Uh. I'm . . . good with computers. . ." Hmph. Was that supposed to be an answer? –

- Out of the blue, Liquid noticed that not once had the boy looked at him with his own free will.

Liquid shifted awkwardly. "Why aren't you looking at me?!" He demanded, and in a single sharp movement, placed his two foremost fingers underneath the boy's jaw and snapped his gaze up to meet his. –

- A pain spread through his bowels. At first he thought the boy had stabbed him – which of course was ludicrous- but when the sting ebbed away as abruptly as it had sprung, he knew for certain that it wasn't so. It was a deep-rooted emotional pain, and what had caused it was seeing the hurt in the boy's beautiful eyes.

He was terrified.

It didn't make sense why Liquid was feeling this way.

. . . That was a lie. He knew full well why he was upset at hurting his feelings. It was because they were the same. . . Liquid was far more aware of current events than the others gave him credit for. From his vantage point as Snake's betrusted McDonald Miller, he had learnt of the _dutiful_, _caring_ and _chivalrous_ display of unexpected emotion toward that irritating girl. It helped in a way; it made Snake's movements more predictable and controllable, but on the negative side of things, Snake's fondness regarding the teenager had rendered him absolutely oblivious to any and all other forms of affection aimed at him. Which was just as well: from his seemingly relentless bombardment of inappropriate comments during any and all situations, Snake didn't apparently swing that way. Either that or he was overcompensating. It was so difficult to tell these days . . .

After he had recovered from the crash, Liquid had viewed the surveillance footage of Snake and the boy in the communications tower and had discovered that while he was circling the building, thirsting for blood of his brother, _they_ had been engaging in am intimate little chat about their _feelings_, and that just plain pissed him off. It didn't help when he still managed to shoot him down, regardless of how unfocused on the particular mission at hand he was.

Speaking of unfocused . . .

Liquid had just realised that he had been standing stock still with his leather-gloved fingers beneath the boy's chin for almost a minute now. He, the boy, hadn't moved an inch – out of fear, of course –paralysed by the terror Liquid's close proximity had always seemed to give him….

In a seemingly thoughtless action, Liquid removed his glove and placed it under the jaw of the boy.

"I know what you're up to." Liquid spat angrily, never being the one to beat about the bush. "How can you allow yourself to fall in love with the man who killed her?" The name was left unspoken, but Liquid felt it didn't need to be said. The boy was understandably shocked by what Liquid had said, but he didn't care. He continued: "Do you think you were the only one who loved her?" Do you think you were the only one who will miss her? How selfish!" There was genuine anger in his tone, something Liquid had been trying to keep a lid on for the duration of the revolution. Liquid moved his fingers from the tip of the boy's chin to his throat, firmly gripping –but not squeezing – it. "It angered me every time I saw you around her. You never once had the guts to tell her how you felt and you never needed to; it was obvious to all who had eyes!" Liquid's grip tightened – only slightly by his standards – but a considerable deal by the boy's standards as his hands jumped up to Liquid's hold instinctively. "I had the decency not to show my feelings around her. Considering how she thought of my father, it would not have been proper to let her know….. It wasn't necessary to let her know…. Nothing about feelings of that nature is necessary for a warrior…. But _you_…!" Liquid growled, lifting the boy off his feet. "_You_ think you had a chance with her?! Disgusting! But then, that _is_ all your kind is good for, isn't it? Mindlessly passing on your genes to any female who appeals to you. You sicken me!"

Liquid dropped the boy and he landed with an unsurprisingly light thud. Liquid turned away hastily biting back bitter tears; he had let go of his emotional control a little towards the end of his diatribe…. But seeing the boy with Wolf had always left him angry…. And Wolf was always so _nice_ to him, which made it all the more difficult for Liquid to tolerate. The very notion that Wolf cared for him made his stomach turn. He wasn't _good enough_ for her….. and now he was after Solid…. Was his love for Wolf so easily tossed aside? It made him so angry…. –

- There was a hand on his shoulder. Liquid span around. Apparently, the boy had recovered from being dropped on the floor and was now standing uncomfortably close to him, eyes filled with sincerity. Liquid was almost worried about what would happen next…

"Do you want to talk?" The boy said, hand still on his shoulder.

There was a pause.

Liquid laughed out loud. Had he just heard him correctly? "Do I want to _what_?" He managed to get out through chuckling.

This boy became annoyed, though not intimidating despite his best efforts. "You don't have to pretend to be tough with me."

Liquid threw his arms out at both sides. "You think this is an act?? I _am_ tough and if you don't believe me, I can prove it to you!" Though it was intended as a threat, the boy had apparently drummed up courage from some unknown source.

"Maybe physically…." The boy knew his words were a mistake even as they left his lips, but despite the cold rage that was spreading across Liquid face, he continued before he could shout him down. "You wouldn't be so angry at Snake for just existing if you were strong mentally. You've been used so much throughout your life that"-

-"_Shut up_!" Liquid yelled and struck him across the face with his un-gloved hand. The boy staggered back a few paces and then fell to the ground. His glasses had flown off somewhere and it took a few moments of shakily finding them and placing them back on his face before he had the guts to continue;

"You can hit me all you want but it won't change what I've said. I know you've told your minions to kill me, and that's why I've come."

_How could he know about that?_

"How can you know about that?"

"Like I said; I'm good with computers."

Liquid snarled: "So you come here, make small talk with me; why? When you know very well I've just put you up for execution? And how did you even get past the Genome soldiers? The orders were theirs!" It didn't make any sense…. _Nothing_ about this made any sense….

"Never mind how I got past them." The boy said, meagre confidence growing into unyielding defiance as Liquid's stark and militaristic poise spiralled down into confusion. "I came here because I wanted to face you myself."

"Face me?"

"In combat."

Liquids eyebrows shot up, and it took all the will he could muster not to laugh out loud again. "_You_? Fight _me_?!"

"I knew I wouldn't win," The boy said, straightening up his glasses with one hand pushing at the bridge in a futile attempt to hide that he was close to tears. "but I wanted to try anyway…. I….. I….. didn't like the idea of just sitting around waiting for it to happen…. And I didn't like the idea of getting Snake to protect me from you…. Because after seeing what happened to Meryl, I knew he couldn't…. but after hearing what I just have… I'm not really sure I can fight you anymore."

"You couldn't fight me in the first place." Liquid scoffed. The boy ignored him.

"I once saw this anime . . ." The boy began, straightening up despite his rough treatment and despite Liquid's snort at the word 'anime'. "…it was about two men from opposing martial arts schools living in a world where might makes right.. . . . A world you're trying to make here today.. . . The protagonist knew a martial art that made him by far superior to all other warriors, yet the antagonist went up against him anyway for the love of a woman."

"What has this got to do with anything?!" Liquid barked, feeling his patience tried by the romantic plot: men would do anything to get a piece of a woman, and it insulted him.

"I'm getting to that bit." Said the boy agitatedly. "Anyway, in the end the protagonist despises the antagonist so much for all the suffering and misery he has caused in the attempt to reshape the world in his image that he fights him without a trace of mercy and mortally wounds him, yet as he dies, the two men learn that their love for his woman has united them and that if they are capable of loving the same woman, they are not as different as they thought. . . ."

Liquid knew where the boy was going, and he didn't like it.

"Did you just make up that story to teach me a lesson?!" He barked.

The boy shook his head. "Hokuto No Ken Chapter 1. It all ends when the anti-hero dies and teaches the hero that they are not so different after all, and I believe that is what's going to happen with you and Snake: You don't hate him, you hate what he represents."

"That's a lie!" Liquid spat, marching toward the boy, yet he remained surprisingly unflinching. . .

"Then tell me!" Said the boy, with a courage that profoundly unnerved Liquid. "Tell me one thing about him!"

"He stole my birthright!" The obvious answer.

"About _him_!" He yelled. "What he likes and dislikes. What makes him smile, what makes him cry? Do you know anything about the man, or are you as obsessed with the myth as I was?!"

"What do you mean?" Liquid asked, recoiling slightly, as if he was afraid to hear the answer.

"Everyone's heard of the legendary Solid snake. The stuff that gets put out in the public domain is bound to be only the tip of the iceberg… I've known him only a short time and even I can tell he's much deeper than the grouchy gung-ho American Patriot# the media portrays: Why cant you? Unless you don't want to see it; it makes him harder to kill doesn't it? You think killing him will make it all better? Well it won't!"

He was practically yelling at him.

"Well," He continued, his voice lowering to a whisper. He probably would never have spoken to him in this matter had he not believed he was about to die anyway. "I don't want to fight a man like you. A man like you deserves my pity, not my hatred."

For some reason, it had only just struck Liquid that his right hand was still un-gloved, and he raised it to his face. It felt uncomfortably bare, much like himself at this moment in time. What the scientist was saying wasn't true – obviously – but then if that was really so, what was it making him feel so. . . Naked?

"Are you prepared to die?" Said Liquid suddenly. He expected it would make the boy flinch, but he didn't. He was so unnerving when he was courageous, yet Liquid suspected few had seem this side of him.

"Nobody really is. . . ." He replied, with a confidence Liquid had never seen in him before. It suited him, though; a snivelling coward who could knock him for six with mere words. . .

"What I meant was. . . .If there was a way out of your fate, would you take it?"

The boy took longer to think about his answer than he had anticipated.

"I guess I would." He finally replied.

"Then we shall make a deal."

"W… What kind of deal?" He said, finally regaining that sheepish nature that had once made him so distinctive.

Liquid moved fast and swiftly, beyond the speed and grace of a mortal man and caught the boy's chin in a smooth, fluidic movement that was almost signature to him now and seemingly caught the fragile boy's breath with his bare hands.

"There shall be a final battle between 'him' and I." Said Liquid with a trancelike quality to his dulcet speech. "And I wish to make a rather unique wager on it."

The boy didn't reply, he only gulped. The transformation between inspiring recluse to apprehensive hermit was so seamless Liquid barely noticed it, even with his elevated sense of warriors' intuition.

"If you want your life then you will make me this promise. . . . For the sake of the two that you love." The names were not spoken, but they needn't be. "If Solid Snake wins the ultimate battle . . ." Liquid always felt awkward when he said 'that' name. "Then I want you to swear that you will stand by him and watch over him, for you hold a perspective that one borne and bread on combat cannot possibly possess. . . Because that is what someone who loves another, does."

"Why would you ask me to do such a thing?" He asked, his skin turning cold beneath Liquids strong fingers.

"Because if he defeats me, then he is not the man I imagined. . . Do you understand me?"

The boy nodded. "I swear it."

Liquid laughed maliciously, the sound coarse and offending to ears tendered by whispers. "You haven't let me finish!" He turned suddenly serious. "If he loses. . . ."

The boy's breath caught in the back of his throat.

"Then you must give yourself to me, wholly and completely, body and soul."

They boys' eyes widened. "Why?"

Liquid's fingers on the boy's chin sailed round his jaw to a stranglehold, though not malevolent; even the boy could sense that.

"Because a warrior such as myself needs someone like you . . . to act as a conscience, a sense of right and wrong... It is so easy to lose track of what is good and what is evil in this life. . ."

"That doesn't explain the 'body' part."

Liquid involuntarily chuckled.

He had watched Emmerich for some time now and hadn't known what to make of his odd behaviour; to make a Metal Gear in the interests of peace – it made no sense to someone like him. Wasn't it obvious that it would be used as a nuclear platform? Yes . . to a bitter , disenchanted sinner like him, perhaps. . . but that fact that so many others at varying points in the government had the same viewpoint as him would have been very disconcerting. . . had he not been striving for the goal of world war, of course.

"Because I will take a perverse pleasure in defiling your purity."

The boy turned bright red, just like a chameleon. Liquid laughed out loud at this.

"Does it really make you that embarrassed?" Liquid said his hand was still on his chin and Liquid resisted the urge to take his throat. He was so _easy_ to hurt . . . And it gave him so much pleasure to do so. "Do you have any _idea_ what you do to me? I would devour you if I could!"

". . ."

_---------- -----------_

"Dave?" Called Hal as he searched with his eyes (though not his hands, as he was a bit apprehensive at putting his hand in a place like that) to the very back of the small refrigerator in his makeshift laboratory, if it could be called that. It could be more accurately described as a techno-squat. He kept his fridge disconnected for most of the night, hoping that the insulation would keep the heat out; the humming of the devices in it kept him awake. "Do you know what happened to my Gorgonzola?"

"Your what?" Came his gruff voice.

" It's a type of cheese." Informed Hal.

"Oh yeah. _That_. I threw it out; It'd gone mouldy."

Hal would have laughed had he not been really looking forward to it.

It unnerved Hal, how easily he had gotten used to the sound of his voice.

Imagine if you will, the greatest superhero in existence. Then imagine rooming with him. At first it was like a giddy childhood fantasy, even though deep down Hal knew 'Snake' was just a man. . . That phrase . . . It could so easily be said . . . 'Snake is just a man' but it was so much harder to swallow. He _was_ the legendary hero 'Solid Snake' but more so he was David Hodgson, a rough, closed, privaite man that feigned little or no interest in the outside world because of all that had happened to him in the past.

But just because he pretended not to care about the rest of mankind didn't mean he wasn't prepared to fight for them. Life was less complicated for someone like him if you cut yourself off from the rest of the human race, even if you knew deep down that they werent all bad people. Both he and Hal knew it wasn't nessicarily the right thing to do, though. David was still recovering – infact – Hal doubted he would ever recover at all, and maybe that was what made him so important to the benefit of mankind; his wounds would never heal; the hurt that 'Outerheaven' – in its various incarnations - had done would never go away.

---------- -----------

Liquid's kiss was tender and receptive of his needs, yet firm and forceful. Hal had lost all awareness of his surroundings, and wholly lived in the kiss the unyielding warrior was forcing on him, and yet, he did not pull away. The idea of pulling away disgusted him at this moment in time, and even if he did, Liquid would not allow it. Liquid could take what he wanted from the boy, but the knowledge of this only inflamed his desire to be pillaged of every last scrap of pent up passion that he had. Liquid was powerful and firm, strong hands moving through his hair with unmitigated intimacy, Hal melting into his arms and finding that his confusing uncertainty in engaging in these loving, yet cruelly carnal acts with someone of equal gender was serving only to inflame his hunger to an extent no woman could ever induce. Liquid was a man, and as a man, he knew exactly what to do to a man to drive him insane with lust.

Liquid was as brutal in love as he was in war, and pulled away from the kiss to observe his victim. Hal's face was hot, his lips swollen and pliant and finding that he body abhorred being away from the soldier's savage touch. He was panting hungrily, much like Liquid, and never broke away from that diamond hard gaze as the warrior's powerful hands slid unmercifully over his body to his hips, pressing them against his.

" If I wanted. . ." Liquid whispered, yet the sound was all Hal could hear other than the racing of his heart, the intense thumping of his pulse so strong that he swear Liquid could feel it through the bare sections of skin on his chest – skin that Hals' palms now lay flatly on, as if he could absorb the mans raw animal lust from his very heart. "If I wanted. . . I could do anything I want to you and there wouldn't be a thing you could do to stop me. . ."

". . .Maybe I don't want to stop you. . ."

"I want you to try and stop me." Liquid said, pulling him close and pressing him against his body in a powerful embrace. " I want to take you by force, but I want you to want me to do it."

". . . Please. . ." Was all he could murmur in his anticipation of the kind of love a commandingly unmerciful male like Liquid could perform.

There was only one thing that could ruin a moment like this. Well . . . There were several things that could ruin a moment like this, but this thing that happened was-

-"AHEM."-

Ocelot.

Liquid shoved Hal away from him so fast he almost fell over, had he not stumbled into the deceptively old looking man. There were few in this life that could appear perfectly fine only a few hours after getting his arm chopped off and receiving little or no emergency medical assistance, and the fact that Ocelot was amongst them was a testament to how little one should fuck with him.

"Take him away." Liquid barked, as if what he had done had just been some kind of interrogation. Ocelot raised an eyebrow, the gesture silently asking 'take, or kill?' "Make sure that no harm comes to him; if something goes wrong with the PAL code entry, we will need him to rectify it."

As Ocelot grabbed his arm and lead him away to a low security detention area close to the Metal Gear hanger, Hal noticed that not once did Liquid look him in the eyes.

---------- -----------

There was a hand on his shoulder.

"Ah!" Hal jumped up from the fridge and into the man that had just touched him.

Dave span him around.

"Are you okay? You were quiet for longer than you usually are."

Had Hal been mentally on the ball at the time, he would have noticed the sarcasm in his voice. The fact that he didn't cause David to examine his face for signs of what was wrong.

After a few moment of concern, his face melted into a roguish smirk, then finally he gave him a playful slap on the shoulder, which hurt a lot more than Hal cared to admit.

"Thinking about 'La Blue Girl' again?" He asked slyly.

"I! Wha??" Hal stammered.

"You're blushing" Snake looked him up and down. Mostly down. "in more places than one."

"I am not!" Hal said, and messed up his argument by placing both hands over the evidence to the contrary.

"Didn't think I knew about your little habit, huh?" Dave said, leaving him and striding back off to whatever he was doing before Hal called him. "I'm not as bad with computers as you think, Hal."

Hal was about to argue with him when he decided against it; he didn't want to tell him what he had been _really_ thinking about.

Slowly, Hal closed the fridge, wondering if the skill of the touch Liquid had shown him was a genetic trait . . .

--------------------

TEH EHND!

Notes:

I took snakes birth name from a name mentioned in an official guide released at the time of mgs1, however it was apparently someone else and not him. . .

# I really hate it when fans call Snake something along the lines of 'a true American patriot', because in MGS2, he says not only is he a Nomad, but in his big closing speech, that he fights for all mankind, not just nationalities. He's a patriot of mankind, not political domains.


End file.
